Trail Fund NZ’s SRAM Winter Grant Round funds five projects

SRAM’s Crankworx support delivers tangible results for trails across the country

Without trails, there would be no riding, which is why top-quality bike component manufacturer SRAM and national distributor Worralls teamed up with Trail Fund NZ at Crankworx to invest in the infrastructure their customers need and love.

“Crankworx was the biggest mountain bike event held in New Zealand in almost a decade and it’s fantastic to attract that level of competition to the country,” says Worrall’s SRAM product manager Peter Adams. “To demonstrate our support, we wanted to ensure we gave something back to the trails that enabled the event to take place.”

Thanks to their initiative, which saw them donate all proceeds from the Crankworx t-shirts they designed specifically for Trail Fund, five clubs from regions around the country received $7,500 for a wide variety of projects.

Budding young mountain bikers at Te Huruhi School on Waiheke Island received funding for an off-road trail – that runs around the perimeter of the school – thanks to the application put together by Waiheke Mountain Bike Club (WMBC), which is committed to helping the school get more kids on bikes.

“It’s a real community effort,” says WMBC president Damien Clarke. “Last year the school had 30 mountain bikes donated to them, and we teamed up with a group of parents to build the trail. To complete it, we need gravel and a day of compacting to weatherproof and permanently designate the track.”

The trail is already popular with the school children, has been used for fundraising cycle events and is used in the winter for the WMBC’s weekly Bike Sunday events, where kids are taught mountain bike skills and encouraged to participate in the sport.

As one of the SRAM Winter Round Grant recipients, WMBC and the school will receive the required materials and funding to cover the compactor rental, as well as two Weapons of Mass Creation (an innovative trail building tool sold through Trail Fund) for a new uphill trail WMBC volunteers are working on at Onetangi Sports Park.

The other four recipients include Mountain Biking Otago in Dunedin, Te Miro Mountain Bike Club in Hamilton, Buller Cycling Club on the West Coast and Nelson Mountain Bike Club.

Mountain Biking Otago volunteers have been busy spending their Monday nights building two new trails; The Green Mile Climb which is a Grade 4 uphill track and Fir Trader, a Grade 2 two-direction trail. The SRAM funding will go towards a third trail, Bermageddon, which has just begun but keeps everyone inspired thanks to the plans for plenty of berms, jumps and other technical bits.

Te Miro club members were thrilled to find their luck had changed thanks to SRAM and Trail Fund, after their on-site container full of tools was broken into,
leaving a skeleton selection as the club heads into the busy building months of summer. They plan to replace several tools and equipment with the funding received; a contractor’s wheelbarrow, 50cc brush cutter, various hand tools, nails and protective apparel.

Buller Cycling Club will spend their finding on the Kawatiri River Trail, which provides an integral link between the now-completed, dual-use cycle trail at Westport’s Kawatiri Beach Reserve and the town itself. The dual-use trail took the club three years to complete, and they are confident building this connector trail will increase use dramatically.

In April 2014, a massive storm wiped out a number of trails in the Nelson region. Since then, Nelson Mountain Bike Club has been working to rebuild a connected network of trails, with a focus on clear signage for club members, non-members, visitors and walkers to enjoy. To achieve this, they need to invest $4,500 in creating 800 durable signs. The $1,500 the club has received from Trail Fund will go towards this project.

SRAM is pleased to see its financial support going directly to volunteer-led trail building projects in various communities and recommends Trail Fund NZ as an ideal channel for distributing trail building funding.

“Trail Fund has grown its profile and its efforts at an impressive rate since it originated in 2012,” says Peter. “We thought partnering with them would help endear our initiative to the public, and we were right.”

About SRAM

SRAM Corporation is a privately held bicycle component manufacturer founded in 1987. SRAM employees are passionate about cycling. They ride their bikes to work and around town, in the peloton, on the trails and down the mountains. It’s this passion and participation that leads to many of the innovations seen in SRAM products. SRAM hopes you enjoy them as much as they do.

About Worralls

Founded in 1901, W.H.Worrall is New Zealand’s oldest premium cycle distributor. Worralls supplies SRAM to bicycle dealers around the country and has been a long supporter of cycling advocacy.

About Trail Fund NZ

Trail Fund NZ is a not-for-profit organisation, run solely by volunteers, which supports the development and maintenance of publicly available, environmentally sensitive and sustainable mountain bike-accessible trails in New Zealand.